A spell trigger item requires that you be have the base spell on your spell list to use. A substantial restriction.
All these prices are [Level]*[Spell Level] * Price
The rules offer a price for 50 charge spell completion items as 750gp
The rules offer a price for unlimited user activated items as 2000gp
Question:
If I wanted to make an unlimited spell completion item (not a weapon - say a bobble that cast 'secure shelter') would it be fair to average the two prices?
So an unlimited spell completion item - you'd need to know of the spell but not prepare it - 1375gp?
In the case of a Wizard Token of Secure Shelter 3850gp not 5600gp. If you don't have the spell on your spell list you're out of luck.
Sigurd
Are you familiar with the Eternal Wands from the Magic Item Compendium?
If not, they are wands that allow casting twice per day of one Arcane Spell. They cost roughly the same as regular wands.
So your Secure Shelter Eternal Wand or Token or whatever would cost 4*7*2000/5*2 = 22400gp. Maybe rule that it just casts one per day and half the price?
Of course, Secure Shelter is a spell that I think might be difficult to abuse. You could probably safely make it worth whatever you want. A damage spell of the same level though would surely get abused if made too cheaply.
By the way, an item that lets you build a city of Secure Shelters with unlimited at will castings would cost 56000gp rather than 5600gp. (4*7*2000)
Yes, each of the final prices is off by a zero. Thanks for catching that.
If the forum software would let me edit it.....
There is no pricing structure given in the RAW for unlimited spell-trigger itms, so this is a DM judgment call.
Basically, there is no difference between unlimited use-activated and unlimited spell-trigger. Realistically, no fighter would build himself a ring of a spell-trigger item, but a wizard would. For the fighter, he'd just make it not a spell-trigger. For the wizard, it doesn't matter. It's all the same.
So I wouldn't allow the price to be different. Doing so is just saying "OK, Mr. Wizard, here's a loophole you can exploit for cheaper items."
If I had to, which I hadn't, but if I had to, I would use this rule:
Item Requires Specific Class or Alignment to Use: Even more restrictive than requiring a skill, this limitation cuts the price by 30%.
However, there is almost no spell in the game that only one specific class can use (every arcane spell is used by Sorcerers and Wizards, almost all divine spells are used by clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers, not to mention other classes in the APG). So this one may not apply to very many spells at all, and even when it does, it still sounds to me like "OK, Mr. Wizard (etc.), here's a loophole you can exploit for cheaper items."
So I would probably use this rule, even though it says "skill", and apply it to mean "skill, ability, or class feature":
Item Requires Skill to Use: Some items require a specific skill to get them to function. This factor should reduce the cost about 10%.
Yes, that's a judgment call and a houserule, but the RAW just doesn't really deal with unlimited spell-triggers, so any answer other than "you can't do it" is a houserule.
I appreciate you comment but I don't agree on your pricing logic.
Your logic is centered in the wants of the caster not the effects of a free market.
If a caster limits the item so that clerics, bards, fighters, rogues, rangers and paladins can't use it, that will reduce the appeal of the item and its market price. You can argue that it might not reduce its cost to make but I think its sale price will definitely drop. The different activation rules do adjust the price by RAW so extrapolating a commensurate price reduction seems reasonable.
I guess you're right about the 'judgement call' involved. I just would like to hear what others think to see that I'm fair.
Sigurd
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I pretty much agree with the terrasque (and really, we do you not want to agree with a terrasque?), I view the 2000 gp modifier more as the "at will" modifier in general (and 750 gp as the "50 charges" modifier). In my world, activation type matters less to item price then activation frequency.
Basically the formula works out to:
{spell level} x {caster level} x {uses per day} x 1000 gp
Then, as if magic item creation was a sale at a "discount superstore", once you buy 5, the rest are free. So a 4 uses per day item costs 80% of an unlimited use item.
If instead of uses per day, you wanted charges, you use the "wand" formula of:
{spell level } x {caster level} x 750g
Further trying to limit the item to specific class or a class ability, unless the item is specially meant to enhance such an ability (like a +1 holy symbol for a cleric, or something) just seems like a gratuitous way of getting an item on the cheap.
From a DM perspective, it would take a lot of convincing for you to sell me on only mages being able to use the magic pop-tent the OP describes.
I just would like to hear what others think to see that I'm fair.
Okay, 38500gp is fair. I would say just about any price from about 10000gp up to the full 56000gp would be fair, for the spell you mention.
BUT, an item that lets the user cast unlimited Enervation, which should in theory cost the same as Secure Shelter, would need to be the full RAW 56000gp, if not more. If even allowed at all.
I certainly agree that Secure Shelter is not as potentially game breaking as a combat spell or enervation. That is part of the idea of the item.
I'd caution that I think the logic of not changing the price based on activation style is flawed. The extension of that logic is that the only limitation that will reduce the price is a limitation that will make the item unusable.
The logical argument is that you have simplified the magic needed to activate it. The wizard supplies the training and the understanding from his\her familiarity with the type of spell. Others do not have that training - I think its fair for the wizard\sorcerer to gain some benefit from that specialized knowledge. I can imagine that the understanding would simplify the 'user interface' creation reducing the construction effort.
You can quibble about the size of the reduction (and that might well be influenced by choice of spell etc...) but in principle making an item usable by only one class is a serious restriction. If that is not a restriction then the only option left is to make it unusable by your own class or unusable. Of course you could make the item usable under rare outside influences (moon phases, presence of rhinos etc) but the result would be the same - the item is still made with the idea it will function.
Sigurd
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I appreciate you comment but I don't agree on your pricing logic.
Your logic is centered in the wants of the caster not the effects of a free market.
If a caster limits the item so that clerics, bards, fighters, rogues, rangers and paladins can't use it, that will reduce the appeal of the item and its market price. You can argue that it might not reduce its cost to make but I think its sale price will definitely drop. The different activation rules do adjust the price by RAW so extrapolating a commensurate price reduction seems reasonable.
I guess you're right about the 'judgement call' involved. I just would like to hear what others think to see that I'm fair.
Sigurd
Ignore free market...this game does not have realistic economy, realistic combat or realistic pretty much anything. What matters is mechanical balance.
The 30% to buy I may give...but not in craft costs.
The 30% to buy I may give...but not in craft costs.
Fair enough, if that is your call. Others might differ.
I am curious. Any others?
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I certainly agree that Secure Shelter is not as potentially game breaking as a combat spell or enervation. That is part of the idea of the item.
I'd caution that I think the logic of not changing the price based on activation style is flawed. The extension of that logic is that the only limitation that will reduce the price is a limitation that will make the item unusable.
The logical argument is that you have simplified the magic needed to activate it. The wizard supplies the training and the understanding from his\her familiarity with the type of spell. Others do not have that training - I think its fair for the wizard\sorcerer to gain some benefit from that specialized knowledge. I can imagine that the understanding would simplify the 'user interface' creation reducing the construction effort.
You can quibble about the size of the reduction (and that might well be influenced by choice of spell etc...) but in principle making an item usable by only one class is a serious restriction. If that is not a restriction then the only option left is to make it unusable by your own class or unusable. Of course you could make the item usable under rare outside influences (moon phases, presence of rhinos etc) but the result would be the same - the item is still made with the idea it will function.
You were asking for opinions. My opinion is that making an item that only the mage can use in order to save money on crafting costs is munchkiny, and a semi-exploit of the RAW. You know the whole letter of the law vs, the spirit of the law debate. I'm not trying to be combative, I'm just confused by a request for opinions followed by extensive rebuttal of the opinions offered. It feels more like you are shopping for agreement to make a case to your GM then actually looking to poll the community.
I hope I'm not coming off as combative. I am interested in what people think.
I agree that this can be munchkiny, but I think this is a really clear case. Perhaps the rules for reduction should be dropped. Or perhaps one shouldn't count on applying them with general agreement. Perhaps I am very wrong.
Please don't think differing opinions aren't welcome. I'm playing with an idea not fighting for a particular item. My apologies to anyone to whom I might have suggested otherwise.
Sigurd
I mostly agree with you, Sigurd, that an unlimited Spell Trigger item should probably be cheaper, but I'm kind of thinking not a lot.
Token of Infinite Enervation: if it's Spell Trigger, then it should be at least a little cheaper. If the rogue is wasting turns trying to get it to fire with a UMD while in combat, then it should be a cheaper item than an automatically successful item. Give it 30% off sticker price (which should probably be more than 56000gp, in my opinion.)
Token of Infinite Secure Shelter: It's not used in combat, there's no penalty for failure, Rogue takes 20 on UMD check, thus trivializing its Spell Activation. Maybe it should be a little cheaper, but not much.
Edit:
One other point. I'm not disagreeing that the item should probably be cheaper. As a magic item, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to offer it cheaper, maybe A LOT cheaper, but that's because of the substance of the spell rather than whether or not it's spell activation.
Why not base it off of the Instant Fortress
The spell is similar to this but much weaker, so it really sets an upper limit on the cost. I would put it at one half to one third of the cost to make a magic item based off of secure shelter.
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My suggestion is to base pricing, not of off a free-market scheme since that breaks down almost instantly in dnd, or even off caster wants, but off of advantage.
The crafting feats already allow a caster to effectively double his *and his parties* effective wealth per level. That's a huge benefit as it is.
The problem with trying to price similar spell levels based on their effects is that at some point the caster will go "Hey, why can't I do this with a combat spell too? Oh, what about this spell? It's not exactly a combat spell, it just happens to occasionally be useful in combat. How about this spell then?
Heck, secure shelter? Create a rabbits warren of cottages to hide in. Stack them up to breach walls. Fire them out of oversized ballistas :D
Since it's highly unlikely that a caster is making a restricted item for market sale, I don't see why you'd factor it in. After all, the creator can always improve the item as the caster gains in power.
But, for these reasons I would suggest you stick to the rules as they already are.
Also, a spell trigger just requires that the spell is on the spell list, not actually prepared.
No different from spell completion except that spell completion requires that character to be high enough to cast that particular spell.
The big difference is that spell trigger doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity.
If I had a player that wanted to make unlimited spell trigger, I would allow him to make a command word item to cast the spell. However, as is the case in these situations, everything is based off the caster level used when making the item. The wielder/wearer doesn't use his bonuses to hit if it's an attack spell, or his caster level for duration.
Why not make it a wizard only item or the 30% discount and then make it limited uses per day?
Charges per day = Divide by (5 divided by charges per day) (Example=Boots of teleportation)
If you took a wand of cure moderate and a market price of 750x2x3= 4500 GP (and a craft price of 2250) and compare it to:
A stick of cure moderate x2/day that is 2000x2x3x0.4(2/5 for 2 per day)= 4800 GP
A stick of cure moderate x3/day that is 2000x2x3x0.6(3/5 for 2 per day)= 7200 GP
Add the 30% off for making it a cleric or druid only use item and it becomes 3360 and 5040.
Creating it yourself drops the price by half... 1680 and 2520 respectively.
Now this is RAW and I know many GMs would freak out over this, but when you think about it, having charges means almost the same as unlimited use for the day when it's new. Sure it runs out, but with 50 charges versus a dragon, it's a whole lot more useful than 2 or 3 uses per day. I don't believe it's very munchkin like to use this based on the limitations. Having 12 is another story (more like monte haul though).
Using the spell Secure Shelter built by a 7th level wizard would last 14 hours, so 2 charges covers over 24 hours.
2000x7x4=56K, 56K x 2/5 = 22400 x.7 (30% off) = 15680, then halved for creation cost is a final cost of 7840. If a 4 PC party wanted to pool 1960 each of their 13500 GP per level 7 wealth (approx 15%), then I see this as a viable purchase... and RAW to boot.
Instant fortress provides something far stronger IMHO, thus it has a far higher price. this is just my perspective, YMMV.
Just a quick note: One of the developers clarified the "discount." It only applies to the market price, not the base price or crafting costs.
Thread-jacking for a moment here, but the table 15-29: Estimating Magic Item Gold Piece Values seems a little off to me. When you are trying to determine the cost of an item with continuous or unlimited charges, determine the price as if it had 100 charges, but if it has some daily limit, determine as if it had 50 charges.
Now nowhere on the table does it give an example of this, and I have always priced 'unlimited' items under the 'Use Activated or Continuous' pricing formula. If anyone can tell me where this is wrong and where I could find an item opperating under these conditions so I could try to flail my weak maths-fu at it and get an accurate pricing, as 5 divided by 100, which is what the (4)th footnote suggests, seems to price any useful item immediately out of the ball-park for most sane games, something that irks me profoundly as I cannot see how a Bracer of Lightning Bolt can be unbalanced when they're easily stolen, negated, counter-spelled or otherwise countered with a little thought on the DM's part such as adding a 'cool down' cycle to the item to prevent every-round-blasting.
I picked secure shelter because I think its a cool idea. The style of the building (blending in with the surroundings) and the relative modesty of it make me think it would be a reasonable item. Of course if you're going to use it a lot, 50 charges isn't enough.
Thazar that's Interesting. You certainly bring up a very normal way of pricing an item.
55,000 is less than the raw cost of the 4th level secure shelter but Instant Fortress has a raft of other securities and its based on a 7th level spell.
Pitching a new tower every night would seem more likely to get you noticed I think, especially if you did it within site of a city wall or castle. Perhaps the user likes this or doesn't feel threatened.
Clearly the pricing is a judgement call. I find it interesting though.
Not that it matters but by the generation rules I've used above it would be 182,000 not 55,000. (13x7x2000) I guess there's a reduction somewhere probably for single use per day (although I don't see that in the description) and just because.
Very interesting point about what provokes attacks. Thanks Magicdealer.
Sigurd
The table has charged items with 50 charges being 1/2 the unlimited use price. Reversing that, you would double the price of a 50 charge spell trigger item.
That gives you an item that gives unlimited use, but requires spell trigger (must be on spell list) at spell level x caster level x 1500.
By comparison, an unlimited use item that was command word only (anyone can use it, but needs a standard action command word), would be x 1800.
And unlimited use "on all the time/use activated" with no restrictions being x 2000.
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Seems like it's matching up price-wise, although I have to admit, it's outside the given rules normally, and as with all magic items, I'd have to say the DM should retain veto rights on anything being made.
As an addendum, I've recently introduced my own "eternal wand" for my most recent campaign.
It is a wand that can do up to 50 charges a day of cure light wounds. It basically refreshes after 24 hours (after it's first use? at a certain time? haven't really needed to keep track).
Since the group will just be buying wands of these anyways, it's made things easier with regards to keeping track of healing outside combat (practically ignored it unless resource attrition is a specific focus), and gold piece micromanaging is somewhat alleviated.
Now.. if they asked for a 50 charge-a-day disintegrate... I might bat an eye. Then again, they'd have to use it more than 100 times to break the cost.. in a closed campaign setting, it's hard to see that happen on anything but lower level healing magic (which I'm not too terribly concerned about).
*Edit* Actually, wands are limited to 4th level, so no worries on disintegrate anyways.
For the sake of an maths-fu check, do these items 'work' as high-end tools for the PCs to make:
Ring of the High Necromancer:
Caster Level 10th (Wizard), minimum caster level for the Waves of Fatigue spell.
Fear (level 4 spell) 3 times per day 4x10x2,000 = 80,000
Enervation (level 4 spell) 3 times per day 4x10x2,000 = 80,000
Waves of Fatigue (level 5 spell) 1 times per day 5x10x2,000 = 100,000
Charges per day : 80,000 divided by (5 divided by 3) = 48,020 gold (x1.5 for multiple abilities) = 72,030 gold.
100,000 divided by (5 divided by 1) = 20,000.
Total Cost : 48,020 + 72,030 + 20,000 = 140,050 gold for the Ring in question.
Rod of the Storm:
(Caster Level 9th, minimum caster level for a Rod)
Lightning Bolt (level 3 spell) unlimited times per day
Fog Cloud (level 2 spell) unlimited times per day
Functions as a +2 Shock Heavy Mace in combat.
18,312 gold for the base weapon x1.5 for multiple abilities = 27,468 + Lightning Ability (3x9x2,000 = 54,000) + Fog Cloud Ability (2x9x2,000 = 36,000) = total cost of 117,468 gold.
Sans the Fog would only cost $72,312 gold pieces.
Making each ability useable 3 times per day would cost $ Mace 27,468 + 32,531 for 3/day lightning bolt + 21,686 for fog cloud = 81, 685 gold.
Of course, such powerful items could have unlimited abilities per day, you just slap the Curse status on the weapon, ie the Ring of the Necromancer the wearer can only be healed by Inflict Wounds spells and can be rebuked or turned, and the Rod of the Storm the wielder gains vulnerability to electrical damage themselves or perhaps take extra damage from Electricity's opposite element, Acid/Earth. I'd toss in a 10% reduction on the items crafting price for such penalties, plus the player has to get a Remove Curse cast on them every time they want to get rid of those penalties.
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As a kind of aside to several comments above... if trying to get a bead on the price of a new crafted item, using existing items can actually cause far more confusion. That's because many times developers will adjust costs outside of the presented formula because to balance an item's effectiveness (both increasing the cost on potent items, and decreasing the cost on weaker ones). While this is certainly a good habit to get into as a DM, as not all spells are equal regardless of their levels being the same, it also can incorrectly skew your calculations.
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Yep, magic item pricing and creation costs only use those formulas as a guideline. The actual price should be evaluated by the dm to decide if the cost is equal to the benefits on a case by case basis.
I'd probably bump the Ring of the Necromancer up to 200,000 gold.
The Rod of the storm I wouldn't allow because it has unlimited uses of an attack spell. I'd probably bump the rod up to 220,000g
Knocked down to 3 uses/day, I'd be fine with it as an item. I'd knock it up to 120,000g however.
The curse you mentioned on the necromancer ring isn't necessarily a drawback. I'd go something more along the lines of "the wearer of the ring is affected by the unluck curse. Once an hour, the wearer of the ring must reroll any roll decided by the GM and take the worse result. This curse cannot be removed by any means while the ring is being worn, and for 24 hours afterwards. After that, the curse may be removed through normal means."
With that, I'd knock the Ring down to 160,000g
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Just a quick note: One of the developers clarified the "discount." It only applies to the market price, not the base price or crafting costs.
Yep...otherwise every crafter would make items that was usuable by their class, alignment and need skill ranks they have. In fact if that was the case, why would ANY magical item not have these requirements and be worth like 15% of what is listed? In fact if I had a player that insisted they be allowed to do such munking-fu...I would just go fine, you can do that...and precced to give out items that was usuable by CE, specific class that the guy using it had with 20 ranks in a skill that the bad guy had and have the item be worth nothing as nobody but the guy they just killed could use it. And this would continue until the munchkin relents or the players lynch him. Or he throws up his hands in dispairs and leaves. You can't out munchkin a good DM ;) .